Microsoft wants Lawrence Lessig off its case, and this week it may get its way. That would be a shame

When he was appointed "special master" last December in the Justice Department's closely watched antitrust suit against Microsoft, Lawrence Lessig expected that by spring he'd be the most important person in the court--the expert telling Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson how to sort through the legal and technological issues underlying the complex case. Instead, he's the one being judged. A federal appeals court will decide this week whether he is, as Microsoft claims, too deeply biased against it to make an impartial recommendation.

It's a bizarre twist in what is already one of the most tangled tales in the history of antitrust....